by Beezy Marsh
Mavis was introduced to the family over a cream slice at the Lyon’s tea room in Ealing Broadway, although Ivy stayed at home with Charlie, who was back from the army. A visit to the Lyon’s tea room was definitely a cut above as far as Acton folk were concerned. Annie had never set foot in the place before; she’d only admired the white and gold lettering on the frontage, not to mention the gleaming liveried van which was always parked outside. George had put on his best bib and tucker and was nervously adjusting his tie when Mavis hove into view, puffing away on a cigarette.
She was generously proportioned and as she grabbed George in a kind of a bear hug to plant a wet kiss on his cheek, Annie thought she might break him in two. When she ate, she sank her teeth right into her food, consuming it with gusto, flicking fag ash everywhere.
‘Ooh, fag ash Lil!’ said Elsie under her breath.
Mum looked a bit concerned when George started coughing. ‘Maybe you could put that out while we eat?’
‘Oh, no!’ cried Mavis. ‘He don’t mind a bit, do you, George? In fact, I keep telling him to take it up because smoking opens up your airways in the morning.’ George wheezed a little as he laughed. ‘Cough up,’ said Mavis.
But despite everyone’s worries, Mavis was a good sort and George was very fond of her. So fond, in fact, that before long, Mavis was stomping up the aisle, so he could slip a ring on her nicotine-stained finger.
After they were married, they moved to Ruislip, which might as well have been the moon as far as Mum was concerned.
‘Ruislip!’ she muttered to herself, running some sheets through the mangle in the back yard, as George’s hens pecked aimlessly and wandered in and out of the Anderson shelter. ‘What on earth did he want to go and move to Ruislip for?’
In some ways, Annie thought her mother might have preferred it if he were still abroad fighting. At least then he would have sent a postcard.
Annie had only sent her eldest daughter up to the shops two minutes ago to get Harry’s evening paper, so she couldn’t be back already, surely?
The knocking at the front door got louder and she turned the gas down on the stove, so that the bacon she was frying for tea didn’t get burned to a cinder.
‘All right, I’m coming!’ she shouted, bustling up the hallway. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t take the key with you!’
She opened the door to find that Anita wasn’t standing behind it after all. In her place was a well-dressed woman with a brolly hanging over her arm and a suitcase in her hand.
‘I’ve come to see Harry,’ she said, with a determined look in her eye. ‘I’m his sister, Kitty.’ She stepped over the threshold without waiting to be asked and handed her hat to Annie. She glanced around the hallway with its peeling paint and sniffed at the air. ‘You must be his landlady?’
‘No,’ said Annie, who was unable to hide the look of surprise on her face at the very suggestion. ‘I’m his wife!’
Harry ambled down the hallway to see who the visitor was and stopped in his tracks when he caught sight of Kitty. Her face was set like stone.
‘Well, Harry, you’ve been busy in London, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘Too busy to come up and visit me and Mum in Newcastle and now I see why.’
Right on cue John and Pat bundled out of the kitchen brandishing Anita’s favourite dolly, which they liked to pinch to tease her. Anita then came in the front door with the Evening News, handed it over to her mum and scampered up the stairs in hot pursuit of her little brother and sister.
‘Are these your children?’ said Kitty. She addressed the question to Harry, but Annie answered.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘All three of them – Anita, John and Patricia. Come down here and say hello to your Aunt Kitty, children.’
Three little heads bobbed over the bannisters before there was a stampede down the stairs.
Kitty’s expression softened a little as they gathered in front of her. ‘Why, they remind me of us when we were young, Harry!’
Harry didn’t smile. He looked at the floor, as if he was waiting for it to swallow him up.
There were so many questions in Annie’s mind about why Harry had been so secretive, but it wasn’t her way to make a fuss, so instead, she took off her apron, smiled at her sister-in-law and said, ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’
Harry and Kitty settled in the sitting room upstairs and Harry shut the door firmly behind them. Annie knew, without him having to say anything to her, that he needed to have some time alone with his sister. Kitty certainly was every bit as forceful as Harry had warned her, so it was no surprise when she heard raised voices from both of them.
Annie brought them some tea and sandwiches on a tray and when she went in, Kitty was sitting, crossly, with her arms folded and Harry was gazing out of the window. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.
Annie left the room but hovered in the hallway outside. She shouldn’t have done so, really, because it was eavesdropping, but she just couldn’t help it. Harry’s sister had turned up without so much as a by-your-leave and had mistaken her for the landlady! Why on earth hadn’t Harry told her the truth? Anger knotted itself into a furious little ball inside her stomach but she didn’t want to spoil the visit and so she willed herself to be calm, for Harry’s sake and the children’s.
She pressed her ear to the door.
‘What else was I supposed to do?’ Harry said crossly. ‘There was a war coming and I fell in love, of course I married her. We wanted to start a family together! I don’t need your permission to live my life.’
Annie couldn’t catch Kitty’s reply, but she heard Harry say, ‘There was no way I could go back there, Kit, you know that, so please let’s not go over that again. You’ve got to let it lie. Promise me that.’
Perhaps Kitty had been insisting that he should have moved the family to Newcastle during the war, after all? Their voices grew quieter so that she really had to strain to hear and Harry murmured something which she couldn’t make out.
Then Kitty erupted: ‘But I must have the children come to stay with me. It’s only right. You cannot cut them off from their Newcastle family like this. It’s not what Dad would have wanted. You’ve made your choices and you’ve done what you’ve needed to do but we are family and I won’t let you keep me apart from the children, not any more.
‘We both want the same thing. We both know what’s done is done, so there’s nothing to worry about. It would be good for your eldest to get out of London and see something of the city where you grew up, wouldn’t it?’
Annie heard the chinking of china being loaded onto the tray and hurried away downstairs to the kitchen to check on the children, before she was caught out being a nosy parker.
When Kitty came into the kitchen she was wreathed in smiles and gave each child a hug, before asking Anita, ‘Perhaps you’d like to come and stay with me in Newcastle very soon?’ She added hastily, almost as an afterthought, ‘If your mother will allow it?’
Their eyes met and Annie nodded. She’d waited so long to meet this woman who knew Harry better than anyone. She wanted to be friends with her, even if they came from very different worlds. And Kitty had a point – it would be good to show the children where their father came from. Besides, it was clear to Annie that Kitty was clever and that might lead to better opportunities for the children.
The world was a different place since the war: things were being rebuilt, there had been a general election and the working man had had his say, to the extent that a Labour government had swept to power. Working-class people like them had a bigger voice because of the sacrifices they’d been prepared to make fighting for their freedom and Annie wanted to make sure her kids had more chances than she’d ever had, toiling in the laundries from the tender age of twelve, just to help her family make ends meet.
‘It’s a long journey, though, King’s Cross,’ Annie said, turning to Harry. ‘Perhaps we should wait a year or so until she’s a bit older?’
‘Of course, you wait as long
as you like,’ said Kitty. ‘But she will come one day soon and that will be enough to keep me happy. And if she takes a book along with her on the journey, the time will fly by.’
Anita clasped at her dolly for a moment before replying: ‘Would you meet me at the station in Newcastle?’
‘Yes,’ said Kitty. ‘We can arrange everything and I will meet you at Newcastle Central Station.’
She caught Harry’s eye. ‘It’s where some journeys end and new adventures begin.’
Kitty was animated with the excitement of it all. ‘And when you come, you can stay in your dad’s old room. He was always my younger brother, you see, and he still is, really, and you are very much like him. You are your father’s daughter, such a clever little girl, I can see that.’
Then she turned to Annie and said, ‘Thank you.’
29
Annie
Acton, February 1952
Long after the war had ended, Annie still woke up in the middle of the night, listening out for the dreadful wail of the air-raid siren.
She’d have to pinch herself to remember that it had all happened in the past, and there was nothing to fear now. Harry slept soundly at her side, just as he had done before the war, when they were first married. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a funny turn with his nightmares and if he was troubled by them, she took that as a sign that he needed to talk to her more about things. He’d never be someone who found that easy, but she accepted him as he was because she loved him so much.
The way his grey eyes twinkled whenever he saw her was enough to let her know she was adored.
People didn’t talk about the Blitz much these days, but the reminders of those terrible war years were all too visible in the craters and the rubble of the bomb sites which had become playgrounds for the next generation. It didn’t matter how many tellings-off worried mothers gave their kids, they’d be scrambling over fallen masonry and playing soldiers in the ruins every chance they got. Annie didn’t like it – not only because of the tragedies that had unfolded there but also because they were blooming dangerous places – but boys would be boys, wouldn’t they?
Everyone knew someone who’d suffered in the war, whether it was losing their house to a German bomb, or a loved one in the conflict. Emotional scars were quietly acknowledged with a listening ear, tea and sympathy, but the Dunkirk spirit still prevailed. People wanted to look forwards, not back, and the politicians had promised new houses, built by the council, which were springing up all over town. They were boxy-looking, modern and clean and people were pleased as Punch to get one, although Annie still loved their flat above the dairy on Horn Lane.
And that wasn’t the best of it. Once word got around that the government was offering free healthcare for everyone, the queues to see the GP were longer than anything that Annie had ever seen outside the grocer’s or the butcher’s during the war.
The new National Health Service was the most wonderful thing for people like them, who’d had to count every last farthing to make sure they had enough money to pay their health insurance.
A trip to the doctor had always been a last resort, and for the children only. Everyone else just struggled on regardless, relying on old family cures or whatever they could get for a few pennies from the chemist’s.
But now things were different, although older folk like Bessie couldn’t quite believe it and Annie practically had to drag her to the GP for a tonic when she got a nasty bout of the flu, which laid her low for weeks.
The saddest thing was that although doctors’ bills were a thing of the past, and politicians talked endlessly on the wireless about building a healthier Britain, the NHS wasn’t able to save George.
Annie wiped away a tear as she looked over at the only photograph she had of her brother. It had been taken in the back garden at Grove Road, just before he headed off to North Africa, when Anita was still a babe in arms. He was smiling, just as he did on the last day she saw him in the hospital. That had never left him, even when the tuberculosis made it almost impossible for him to speak and his body was little more than skin and bone.
George had only lived two years more after he and Mavis got married and although they visited every couple of weeks, Mum always grumbled that she barely saw him. After he died, Mavis came round to Grove Road with his war medals, which he had left to John, still smoking like a chimney. Poor George. He’d dodged German bullets at Dunkirk, D-Day, El Alamein and the Italian campaign only to succumb, at the age of just thirty-six, to a disease he’d picked up on the streets of Acton as a child. But there was no sense to this life, war had taught Annie that much.
The children still played with the beautiful toys he had so lovingly crafted for them because he never had kids of his own, and they helped Mum to look after his chickens which ruled the roost in the old Anderson shelter.
Mum put a brave face on it all, but she was broken by the loss of her son and on the anniversary of his death every year, she made a sad pilgrimage to lay flowers at his graveside and each time she returned from the cemetery, she seemed to grow a little bit weaker.
Annie was worried sick about her, because not only had she been right off her food, she’d lost a huge amount of weight too. Most things were still rationed, but not bread, and so Annie made copious amounts of Mum’s favourite bread and dripping, toasting it by the fire down in Grove Road.
That was all well and good until the children came home from school and tried to snaffle it. Bill would swipe at them playfully and tell them to ‘Sling yer ’ook’, while secretly feeding them titbits; he really was a doting grandfather on the quiet.
He and Mum adored the children. Anita was a proper little bookworm and true to her promise to Kitty, Annie sent her up to Newcastle once a year. She always came back with a smart set of new clothes and a caseload of books from her aunt. Kitty visited them in London too, bringing with her copies of the Shipbuilder for John. She’d sit with him at the kitchen table and make him add up all the ships’ specifications, to help him improve his maths.
It was a good thing for him, that quiet time studying, and Harry encouraged it because, like all the local boys, John loved nothing more than to hare about on his bicycle or use the bomb sites around Acton as a playground.
Kitty had none of that whenever she came to stay. As Kitty sat with John going through all the numbers on the page, Annie cooked their tea, quietly marvelling at this clever and determined woman. Kitty had carved her own path in a world which, even after everything that women had done in the war, still thought the best place for them to be was at the kitchen sink.
It wasn’t that Annie had grand plans to go out to work like Kitty. In fact, Annie didn’t mind being at home; she loved keeping house and watching her little ones grow up. It was what she was good at. Harry was still working at C.A.V. where he was one of the union leaders and they were saving up to go to the Isle of Wight on holiday this year. Annie had never been so far afield; she’d heard the beaches were beautiful.
Harry was happier now too, settled in himself. He liked to read the reports in the newspaper about football and he loved to follow the horse racing, but he was dead set against gambling of any sort, which was unusual for blokes. Annie could never quite work that one out. The only time he allowed himself a flutter was on the Grand National.
Harry had yet to break the news of their planned holiday to Kitty, because she’d been hoping to get them all up to Newcastle for a break. Annie would leave that to Harry. Those two still had their letters to each other and their whispered conversations behind closed doors in the sitting room. It had just become part of the routine whenever Kitty came to stay for Annie to bring in a tray of tea and sandwiches and for the door to be shut firmly behind her as she left them to it. She didn’t listen at the keyhole as she had done that first time – why would she? It was just a brother–sister bond, their relationship, and the way they liked to be with each other to talk privately sometimes. She had an inkling it was rooted in the loss of their f
ather when they were both young, but she didn’t pry because, well, it wasn’t her place to do that.
Now clothing was off the ration, she had started taking on some sewing jobs for other people, to make a little pin money, which was nice because she was a dab hand with a needle and thread. She made all the children’s clothes and things for her sister Elsie too, not least the new petticoats which were all the rage.
They required yards of material and Mum laughed her head off at them the first time she saw Elsie swishing about in hers, which she’d starched so that it stuck out a street mile from her legs.
‘You won’t fit that bloody thing in the wardrobe, my girl,’ said Bill, raising his eyes to heaven when he caught sight of her before she went out dancing.
‘Oh, leave off, Bill!’ Mum chided. ‘She’s entitled to enjoy herself and I think she looks smashing.’
Elsie was still living at home in Grove Road and she’d got herself a job as a secretary in one of the factories, which was a big step up. She was more sociable these days but as she gave Mum a quick peck on the cheek, she said, ‘I’ll be back before eleven, so don’t worry or wait up, promise me?’
Annie secretly hoped that one night her sister might stay out late, returning flushed with excitement at having met someone she could go courting with, but Elsie made it plain she wanted nothing more to do with men.
Gone were the days when she’d gallivant all over the West End or Shepherd’s Bush with her mate Joan. In any case, Joan had disappeared off to Ohio to marry that dratted GI Josh at the end of the war and Elsie didn’t complain when she failed to keep her promise to keep in touch.
Elsie confided in her sister Ivy quite a lot, probably more than she did Annie these days. Those two were close in age and they looked up to Annie as a mother figure because she was already working in the laundries when they were little. They’d always been as thick as thieves.